Wage growth dropped to its lowest level since the 2009 downturn, fuelling fears that the squeeze on consumers will hold back Britain’s fragile economic recovery.

Pay, excluding bonuses, slowed from 1.9 per cent in the three months to January 2012 to an annual pace of 1.2 per cent in the same period this year, according to the Office for National Statistics, the poorest growth since the quarter to December in 2009.

This week, official figures showed that consumer price inflation rose to 2.8 per cent in February and economists now expect it to hit 3.5 per cent in the summer,